European Romuleas

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:46:49 PST
Hi,

One of the wonderful thing about having a bulb list with 
knowledgeable people around the world is that we have many people who 
can help us identify the plants we grow from seed. Angelo Porcelli 
supplied me with information allowing me to correct the species name 
of some Romulea plants that a number of us have been growing as aff. 
bulbocodium even though  the description of that species has a stigma 
overtopping the stamens and in these plants the stigma and the 
stamens are the same height.

Angelo says these plants are instead Romulea ramiflora which has a 
rather wide distribution in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and 
Greece. Since one of the photos on the wiki showed the back of the 
tepals and the bracts (often an important identification feature of 
Romulea species)  and since he has the key (in Italian that he can 
read) he can confirm what they are. This illustrates the importance 
mentioned in recent posts of having photos on the wiki that show 
distinctive characteristics (not just a close-up of the flowers).

This is an easy plant to grow and I am very fond of it and I'm sure 
I've probably given seed and corms to the BX with the wrong name. So 
if you have received Romulea bulbocodium corms or seed from me from 
the BX, please go to the wiki page and figure out whether what you 
have is the real species or Romulea ramiflora instead.
<http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>

Mary Sue


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